Day 390: I Exploit My Readership

I never did get round to getting a publishing deal. But no matter! I may as well write a book anyway; every other idiot does. (Look at that cretin Celia Ahern, for example.)

But what should it be about? I have so many ideas, I make myself sick. And so it is that I turn again once again to you, dear readers - each and every one of you blessed with looks, functioning brains and (as I have remarked in the very recent past) the ability to press a button in an online poll!

Here are my ideas. They are all really good. You just have to choose the one you like the best. Let's get ready to rumble!


IDEA ONE: "Who Owns The Yes?"*

Going head-to-head against management classics Who Moved My Cheese? and It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be, my own instant classic, Who Owns The Yes?, is a management bible for our times using, as inspiration, the words, ideas and working methods of my current boss - a man who once wrote:

"We can be kind and sweet once we smash through the walls of indifference and put these clients on railway lines to the world. Once that's done, on the 7th day, we can rest.

Pick up the fkg shovel until then and keep digging. This is the job of superhumans! Not children. We must endure we must prevail."

In it, I will focus on a number of useful points, all of which will provide a combination of both inspiration AND common-sense (or, to coin my own phrase - "common inspiration"), including chapters on:

1. How to Motivate Using The Power Of Email

2 Don't Confirm Their Contract Until The Last Minute - How To Keep Staff Begging For More

3. If You Pay Monkey Nuts, You Get Slightly Bigger Monkeys

4. The Power Of Not Listening - Keeping Yourself Safe From Constructive Criticism

5. Promise The World, Deliver A Donkey

6. Don't Mind Me - I've Only Fucking Done This Five Hundred Times Before

7. Relax In A Foaming Hot Bath Of Denial

And FREE with every purchase of "Who Owns The Yes?": your four-part Audio CD, read by Tits McGee and Abdalmahmood Mohamad: "It's Your Company: Fuck It Up If You Want To".

IDEA TWO: "The Year That Not Much Happened"

What has happened this year, which isn't very much, but is quite interesting (if you are me). Ends up with me moving to Canada, which is a bit of a turn-up for the books.

IDEA THREE: "I Move To Canada"

An epic tale, in which I move from Brixton to Quebec, and a house that is an hour's walk from the nearest shop. I spend most of each day making jam (from frozen fruit), salted muffins and Middle-Eastern banquets. In the mornings, when I am not cooking, I run around the garden (or down the road) and do press-ups on the sitting room floor.

In the evenings, I sit about the place having interesting conversations with a French Canadian self-haircutting pathologist; occasionally, we go away for the weekend. I do not miss Europe, because my friends visit and I visit them. We are happy. We get a dog; we play Scrabble quite a lot, and enjoy Backgammon.

One day, we have an argument about whether to get a cleaning lady or not. I win. About a week later, the pathologist goes to the hairdresser. The hairdresser makes him look like Pierre Trudeau. He wins, for he never visits the hairdresser again. Some years later, we separate for a week: I have found his Celine CDs. He throws Take That back in my face. We reunite.

There is an epilogue. It is set fifty years in the future. We are still doing the same things, and are still happy, but we are onto our fourth dog and both smell of wee.


IDEA FOUR: "My Life: My Life In Monkey"

A tale to inspire even the most soft-hearted of lily-livered middle class Southern kids.

"Brought up in the dirty backstreets of Kensington, Non-workingmonkey struggles through an abusive relationship with a second-hand pram, private education, parents who are not divorced and actually like each other, and a little brother who is not bad, apart from his weird legs. Despite early exposure to the works of Genesis and Yes, Non-workingmonkey is fairly happy.

But one day, Non-workingmonkey's world is shattered: why is her mother storing absinthe bottles in her wardrobe? Why have the dogs, Curses and Transplant, been left everything? And why are there two members of a Genesis tribute band in the spare bedroom?"

IDEA FIVE: "Absinthe, A Small Clay Pipe And A Packet Of Hula-Hoops"

A stream-of-consciousness novel (but loads better than Ulysses or To The Lighthouse, both of which are RUBBISH, particularly Ulysses), telling the story of one hour in one day of my life from the (unpunctuated) point of view of the person living it (and writing it) - in other words, me! It'll be great.


Which is it to be, loyal readers? Let the people decide! And remember, when you're making your choice: it's a million goddam bucks I want, not the Orange Prize for Literature! **




* Thank you to The Bookseller Crow for the idea. And he must know what he's talking about; he's a bookseller.

** Which, obviously, I would win if I wanted to.